sweetgeorgia

Cutting soon.

The sleeves are done, see…

I don’t know if you can tell but the sleeve on top is bigger than the sleeve underneath. The difference? I initially used 3mm Addi’s and the magic loop technique, but I was finding that some of the stitches were getting distorted and ugly. So on the second sleeve, I decided to use 3mm Crystal Palace bamboo DPNs (which was a lot easier!) and looky, looky, I got a different gauge. Ah well. I learn the hard way.

In any case, the only thing that remains is cutting the steeks!

Blocking Baby

Blocking is genius. It takes bubbly, nasty-looking knitting and makes a beautiful smooth and even fabric…even on the backside! I wet-blocked the body of the norgi by soaking it in cool water for about a minute, blotting away the water with a towel and then pinning it to my blocking board. I steamed it very lightly so that the hem would (sort of) lie flat.

If you look closely, there’s a darker line in the background of the moose/trees picture. Why? I got curious and tried to “weave” rather than “float”. Bad idea. The woven colour tends to peek through and show on the right side. Even when the colour doesn’t show through, it’s positioned so close to the cream colour that you and kind of “see through” the cream.

Why did I try weaving? Well, traditionally in fair isle you don’t carry a colour more than an inch (7 or 9 stitches or so). In this pattern, there are some pretty long floats that I thought would look wonky, so I tried to secure the floats better by weaving. I don’t know if Norwegian patterns have this rule against long floats, but in any case I won’t be weaving anymore.

I started the tiny tiny sleeve and I’m using magic loop rather than DPNs. I think the magic loop may be distorting the fabric a little because the circumference is so tiny. Some DPNs might be on the shopping list now.